


Funerals and Lies (working title)

by Scattyuk



Category: Casteel Series - V. C. Andrews, V. C. Andrews - works
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon compliant for Dark Angel and Fallen Hearts, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24595672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scattyuk/pseuds/Scattyuk
Summary: “You’ve been so adamant all these years,” Daddy was saying in a hard, low voice. “I can’t understand why you aren’t fighting to protect her now.”“Because – because Tony’s dead and its … it’s time she saw where she came from, Logan. It’s … it’s just time,” she pronounced in strangely final tones.-----Tony dies 6 months earlier. Many secrets come to light.A fix-it fic because Gates of Paradise was a travesty of a book and we all know Heaven deserved better. I will figure out a better title eventually!
Relationships: Annie Stonewall/Luke Casteel (Jr), Heaven Casteel/Logan Stonewall, Heaven Casteel/Troy Tatterton
Comments: 9
Kudos: 15





	1. Annie

**Author's Note:**

> I am not going to refer to Tony's drunken foray into Heaven's room in Fallen Hearts because that subplot was a totally ret-conned new direction for him compared to Dark Angel and I blame the ghostwriter who finished the book. I am a strong believer in keeping things canon complaint, but for these books it only applies to what Virginia wrote herself!

“Telephone for you, Mrs Stonewall dear,” Mrs Avery said, her brow marred by a small frown. “It’s … well he would only say he was your riding instructor.”

Momma’s face was briefly confused, before her gaze sharpened on a sudden breath and she took the cordless phone from Mrs Avery’s hand, her heels clicking rapidly towards the stairs.

Luke looked up from the college prep Momma had been helping him with, and gave me a questioning look. I could only shrug and go back to my sketchpad, trying once more to capture the way the early evening light caught his eyelashes and made golden patterns on his bronze cheek.

We were seventeen, nearly eighteen, and I was determined that he should have the perfect portrait to mark his passage from boy to man. On the wall behind me were my pencil drawings of Momma, Daddy and my uncle and foster-brother Drake, but there was still room for Luke too, if only I could get it right. But somehow, no matter how often I had tried in all the years since I could first hold a crayon, I never felt satisfied that I had caught the way his earnest, sometimes fiery soul shone out of him.

“You should be revising Hamlet,” he reminded me.

“You should be ignoring me and doing calculus,” I fired back.

Daddy spoke up from his armchair. “You should both be giving me five minutes peace after a long week.”

“Quite right, Daddy,” I said in a prim tone. “Be quiet, Luke, until Momma comes back.”

He rolled his eyes and I stuck out my tongue and we both repressed giggles when Daddy sighed out loud.

It was half an hour before she reappeared, the phone still clutched in her white knuckled hand. “Logan,” she said faintly, “we have to go to Boston.”

He shut his newspaper. “Why the Hell would we go to Boston? That’s why we pay Bob Jones so much money – to deal with those meetings so we don’t have to.”

“Logan,” she said again, “Tony’s dead. He died this morning.”

“Shit,” Daddy breathed, and placed the paper carefully down. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged but there were tears standing in her beautiful blue eyes. “I don’t know. I hated him for so long, it was easy to forget that I loved him too. No matter what he’d done he was still-“ but she broke off, glancing with a strange guilt towards me and Luke. Daddy pulled her into his arms as the tears spilled down her cheeks. “I used to think that maybe, one day, I would talk to him one last time, but…”

“Oh Heaven,” Daddy sighed and kissed her head as she clung to him for a long moment. “Do you want to go to the funeral?”

“I have to go,” she replied, pulling back and wiping her face “We all do – Annie too. They want to read his will straight after.”

Her next words were lost to me in the rush of excitement that ran through me. My eyes met Luke’s as our thoughts flowed in one shared direction: Farthy! Boston! At last I was going to see it! But it was Luke’s frown which brought me back to Earth as he looked once more at my parents. Of course, I chastised myself, how selfish, how immature of me to be so pleased when Momma was so sad. And then I realised his true concern – if I had to be at the reading of the will, then I must be in it! My eyes darted back to Momma and Daddy and I realised they were heatedly discussing the same issue.

“You’ve been so adamant all these years,” Daddy was saying in a hard, low voice. “I can’t understand why you aren’t fighting to protect her now.”

“Because – because Tony’s dead and its … it’s time she saw where she came from, Logan. It’s … it’s just time,” she pronounced in strangely final tones.

\--

Her conviction seemed to waver though, over and over in the week from that moment to the day itself. So often she’d open her mouth and then close it, walking away with tortured eyes. Even on the plane she looked at me with a kind of sad apprehension. I should have been concerned or sad that she was so obviously suffering, but I couldn’t entirely hold off the anticipation that kept me looking ever onward to the greatest house in Boston, centre of so many mysteries in my mother’s life. No matter what Luke, my sensible other half, had urged me as we talked endlessly on long walks round the garden, or how Drake teased me for it, I couldn’t see this as anything other than the most wonderful opportunity.

Our arrival caused a flurry of turned heads and whispered comments the moment we stepped from the hired limo at the family plot. My mother’s poise never left her though, and she held her head high, gripping tight to my hand as we walked across to the small crowd gathered by the open grave. It was only as another susurration of shocked speculation flowed though the mourners from the opposite direction that she showed any real fear.

“Logan,” she said in a sudden urgent tone, “there’s something l should have-“

But before she could finish speaking, I heard him gasp. The crowd parted to reveal a tall, slim man with deep brown eyes, and silver strands peppering his dark hair.

“Heaven,” Daddy bit in a cold, hard voice, “how long have you known?”

Momma was quiet as her eyes rested on that strange man for a long moment until she finally gave a small, defeated sigh. “Just before Jillian died.”

Daddy let out the rest of his breath in a ragged, bitter choke, his angry eyes seeking hers. But she continued to stare across the coffin at the man who was simultaneously a stranger and yet somehow felt so deeply familiar. And who was gazing across at Momma with tears in his eyes to match the tears in hers.

An ancient black man shuffled over to us and nodded his white haired head at Momma. “Miss Heaven,” he said. “Brings a light to this dark day t’see ya here once more.”

She reached to embrace him, letting my hand fall. “I’ve missed you Rye. Were you here when-“

He nodded. “He din’t suffer, Miss. I can tell you that. And he had company at the end.” He looked across to the man who was drawing so many eyes. “Turns out one o’ them ghosts weren’t no ghost at all.”

“No,” she said. “But he was trying to be. I’m glad he came back in time.”

“Bin back years, Miss, so it seems. Mr Tatterton tol’ us it was a new workman in that cottage. But it weren’t no ghost and it weren’t no workman neither.” He smiled at me and nodded at Daddy before shuffling off, his white head bowed once more.

“Momma, who is that man everyone’s talking about?” I asked.

“It’s Tony’s younger brother, Troy,” she said quietly.

“But – Momma I thought he was dead.”

“Yes.” Daddy’s voice still burned with suppressed anger. “Most of us thought so too.” He glared an accusation at Momma who reached across me to grasp his hand.

“Let’s discuss this later, please? Somewhere without an audience.”

Daddy might have responded, his temper never settled quickly I knew, but the priest coughed to catch our attention and begin. In his melodious voice he called the mourners together, describing the times for joy and the times for sorrow and leading in a prayer for Tony’s eternal soul and the hearts of those who loved him. I felt Momma shudder, just a little, beside me. It was a short service, both Momma and Troy were offered a chance to speak but both gave the same soft shake of their heads. That seemed to cause more whispered speculation to swirl. And I had to wonder too.

The talk carried on at the wake, a quiet gathering of businessmen and their families, the great people of Boston, ushered into a large drawing room up at the house – which was overgrown and grubby and, I was sorry to conclude, not nearly the fairytale mansion Luke and I had imagined. A woman perhaps my mother’s age, who had embraced her in an awkward hug a little while earlier, cast her eyes around and then said to her companion, “of course she knew, she must have known. No wonder she wouldn’t talk about how he died.”

“She was always full of secrets,” the other woman said. “Remember those ridiculous lies when she came to Winterhaven? Calling Jillian her aunt when we all knew she was Leigh van Voreen’s daughter.”

“You know what Jillian Tatterton was like. I don’t think that was Heaven’s fault. She didn’t like you trying to get an introduction to Troy though.”

“Well he was clearly mentally unstable, I think we all had a lucky escape. No wonder she liked him so much.”

I moved away before I lost my temper with their mean gossip. For all that I longed to uncover secrets, I wouldn’t stand there while my mother was slandered. Daddy had sat silently in the car on the short drive after the funeral, and now he was speaking to those businessmen who had gathered around the wine, his eyes darting on occasion around the room as if seeking Momma, even though he hadn’t spoken to her in over an hour. I looked uncertainly for her too now. She had shown me the beautiful murals around the walls, painted by her own grandmother, before the half-bent old butler had pulled her aside. That had been twenty minutes ago and I wandered in the direction they had gone, thinking she might be needed by the staff. Instead, I saw her in the next room, running her fingers across the smooth surface of a grand piano. Troy Tatterton stood nearby, picking out a silent melody as he lightly touched the keys.

“I’m glad you could come,” he was saying. “He asked for you, near the end, but it happened so quickly, there wasn’t time.”

“It’s good that he had you,” she responded. “Better really. He always said you were the most important person in his life.”

There was a short pause before he spoke again. “Thank you for the letter. And its contents. It meant a lot to see…” his voice trailed off.

She looked briefly down. “I wasn’t sure if should send them. If it wasn’t compounding what I’d done, if Tony would even let you see it. I sent it to the cottage but I wasn’t sure-“

“It came straight to me there,” he said. “The occupant. Besides, you know what Tony was like. He had his own ways of keeping tabs on us both without monitoring my mail.”

“I always wondered if he knew. If … I wouldn’t have blamed you if you told him.”

“No,” Troy said gently. “I think he suspected. He seemed to almost ask me once and he wasn’t a fool, but … no, he didn’t know. I would never have given him that power over you.” He played a few notes and then looked back up at her. “She looks so much like you. Even more in the flesh.”

“Yes,” Momma said dryly. “Another copy of Leigh. It’s an illusion though. She’s not much like me underneath – she’s a true artist. Her imagination is … boundless. She falls into a picture like it’s her whole world. Every time I look at her I see – all that could have been.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. Then he reached for her hand. “You’ve been happy though?”

“Yes,” she said. “Far happier than I deserve to be.”

He frowned. “There couldn’t be a limit to what you deserve.”

“Don’t – don’t do what Logan does – putting me on a pedestal I can’t possibly help falling off of. I’m not a saint, and I’m certainly no angel. You know that.”

“Heaven, everything you do, whatever it is, is born from a place of love,” he assured her, stepping closer. “From the fierce depths of your heart. That’s the real heart of your goodness. You insist on loving people so much more than _they_ deserve.”

“Troy,” she said, with a shaky smile, “you know I won’t let you talk yourself down either.”

He laughed gently. “ _Touché_. It’s good to see you,” he said, leaning to press his lips to her forehead.

“Miss Stonewall?”

I hastily stepped back so that Momma couldn’t see me, as a young man in a suit came down the hall.

“Yes?”

“I’m looking – Ah! Mrs Stonewall?” Momma emerged from the drawing room. “And Mr Tatterton. Can you please join us in the study? Unfortunately, Mr Burgiss needs to leave for Tokyo tonight, so the reading needs to be brought a little earlier than planned.”

“Am I allowed to come too?” Daddy asked from behind me with an edge to his voice.

The young man looked uncertain. “I – yes – that is if Mrs Stonewall-“

“It’s alright, yes of course Logan can come,” she said, and led the way down the hall to a wood-panelled room, with a large oak desk on one side and a selection of velvet covered chairs which must once have been very fine, but now seemed unloved and forlorn. There were paintings on the back wall: panels to match the fairytale murals in the other room, family portraits, a picture of Farthy in the kind of glamour it held when my mother lived here. I stood and gazed around, knowing my face was inappropriately ecstatic but unable to hold it back in the face of such magnificence.

“For God’s sake, Annie,” Daddy said, “this isn’t the time for your emotional exuberance.”

Momma sat quietly on a long sofa while he walked straight over to a cabinet in the corner where he found a decanter of some dark ruby liquid. He poured himself a large glass and flung himself down next to her.

“At least the port has been looked after,” he remarked.

Subduing my artistic excitement, I took the last chair - beside Troy who was opposite Momma. Three elderly men, and a middle aged woman, all in various household staff uniforms, lined up by the fireplace before a portly man in an exquisitely tailored suit entered the room with his young assistant at his elbow and proceeded to sit at the desk.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We appreciate your cooperation this afternoon. I am Mr Tatterton’s attorney and executor of the estate. This won’t take too much of your time. Once the will has been read there will be documents for each of you to complete and sign and then we will let you return to your friends. Heaton, if you will please read?”

The young man opened a folder from which he drew a single sheet of paper. He stood beside Mr Burgiss as he cleared his throat.

“I, Anthony Townsend Tatterton, declare the following:

“that to my brother, Mr Troy Lawrence Tatterton, I return a 30% share in Tatterton Enterprises, which has been held by myself in trust since his disappearance in 1972, and the sum of unpaid dividends over that period;

“to Mr Ryse Williams, Mr Curtis Johnson, Mr Miles Brown and Mrs Vera Young, I leave annuities of thirty thousand dollars each;

“to Miss Annie Stonewall, of Hasbrouk House, Winnerow, I leave the sum of one million dollars to be held in trust until she is twenty-five years of age. I appoint Mrs Heaven Stonewall and Mr Logan Stonewall as trustees.”

I gasped. A million dollars! Wealth beyond even what I had known with my parents. Enough to live my whole life painting and never need to work!

But before I had even started to absorb my good fortune, Heaton continued. “The rest of my shares in Tatterton Enterprises, my wider investments, my personal effects, and the Farthingale Manor estate, I leave to my-“ Heaton’s jaw visibly dropped as he looked towards his employer in shock. Mr Burgiss glowered at him and he hastily continued. “I leave to my daughter, the aforementioned Heaven Leigh Stonewall.”


	2. Annie

_My daughter ... Heaven Leigh Stonewall_...

He may have carried on talking, I don’t know. Momma closed her eyes as finally tears rolled down her cheeks. In my ears was a terrible roaring, as if the ocean waves beyond the grounds were crashing into this very room. _Daughter_. I looked down at the hands which lay in my lap. At my long, long fingers, which even now itched to hold a pencil or a brush. A Tatterton. Momma was a Tatterton – not just by her grandmother’s marriage, not because Tony had taken her in all those years ago. But a Tatterton through and through.

“Luke Senior wasn’t your father?” I asked her at last.

Her eyes snapped to me. “No. I believed he was until I was your age.” And somehow that seemed to upset her more. Had I triggered terrible memories of discovering her father wasn’t the man she called Pa? But I couldn’t stop.

“And Aunt Fanny isn’t my aunt?”

“No.”

“Luke isn’t my cousin. Drake isn’t my uncle.”

“No.”

I felt the heat of indignation rising. “You lied to me! All those times you told me art was in my blood, and I thought you meant Grandpa Toby carving animals in the Willies – but you meant this!” I flung my arms out.

“Annie, please-“

“And I had a grandfather all these years. Pops and Grandma Loretta have been gone so long, and you kept Tony away from me. And now he’s dead!” Somehow the words were flying out of my mouth – I’d never said a cross word to Momma, never! And yet the anger drove me forward. “Why did you lie to me?”

“To keep you safe,” she whispered brokenly, reaching out to take my hand.

And in that moment, so much anger evaporated. I became aware again of the other people in the room. Mr Burgiss was talking quietly to the servants who trickled out quickly, not meeting my eyes. All of a sudden I felt ashamed and embarrassed at causing such a scene. I looked at Daddy, hoping to see the reassurance I needed in his eyes, but he was staring, slightly pale at something on the wall behind me. And then he glared at Troy beside me, flicking his eyes back and forth between us. I turned to look, but all I could see were old black and white photos.

“It’s funny,” he said at last, as the door shut once more, “that they were born on the same day.”

For a moment I couldn’t understand, the leap in topic was so abrupt - but of course he meant –

“Annie and Luke. It’s always seemed funny that they should be born at the same time – under the circumstances.” And now he knocked back another large gulp of port and glared at Momma. Luke’s parentage was such an unspoken fact in our house, never mentioned out loud – even the day Daddy had told Luke he would pay his college fees next year there had been no acknowledgement of why he would do so. I could barely believe he’d bring it up now.

Momma seemed to clench her jaw, perhaps thinking the same thing. “Logan please,” she said, “this isn’t the time.”

“Well when was the time, Heaven?” he asked. “Seventeen years ago?”

“Maybe it was the day you refused to specify exactly when you slept with my sister,” Momma snapped and then took a breath. “You can ask me any question you want, Logan,” she continued in a more controlled voice, “but not here and now. Can we at least go somewhere alone? This is between you and me.”

For a brief moment I thought Daddy looked scared. “You’re not denying it, are you?”

“Not here, Logan.”

Her tone was implacable and his face set in anger once more. “Fine. Let’s go see what kind of shrine he made of our bedroom, shall we?”

Momma flinched again but stood and followed him, pausing to take my hands.

“Annie, this must all sound very confusing to you. I have a lot to tell you, and I promise that I was always intending to do so eventually. But can it wait, just a little longer, honey?” She squeezed my fingers, shared a very brief glance with Troy and then rushed to follow Daddy out of the room.

I turned to Troy beside me. So many emotions were churning within me, but he looked calm – a little sad, a small crease in his brow as his eyes followed Momma until she was gone. The lawyers unobtrusively passed him papers to sign.

“Will Mrs Stonewall be long?” Heaton asked a little awkwardly. “We do need to get these transference orders finalised and as I said Mr Burgiss has to fly-“

“Mrs Stonewall is now the richest woman in Boston.” Troy said without a glance. “I’m sure Mr Burgiss can wait for her just as did for my brother.”

“Heaton will wait upon Mrs Stonewall’s convenience, and return the signed documents himself,” Mr Burgiss broke in smoothly. “We are of course always happy to support the Tattertons in any way we can.”

Heaton left the room with Mr Burgiss, whispering to him as he went. And then it was just me and Troy. My eyes were drawn to his hands, the pen twitching between his fingers.

“I do that when I feel like I need to paint,” I told him.

His hands froze for a moment and then he continued. “Yes,” he said. “That’s how I feel. Like I need to purge all my emotions into a picture, a new design.” He looked at me carefully. “Your mother said you paint a lot.”

“Every day. I’m never happier.”

He smiled. “Then you are happy often?”

I nodded. “Happy often – sad often too. Sometimes there are dark clouds which seem to block out every speck of light in my soul. But Momma always knows how to make me feel safe again. And then when it passes, I paint it out.”

He looked down with an expression I couldn’t identify. “I’m sorry that happens to you,” he said. “I – I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to feel that way.”

I frowned. “It’s not your fault.”

“Well, it – it runs in the family sometimes,” he said carefully. “But you’re right, there’s no one who can lift a depression quite like Heaven. They say my mother did the same for my father. You’re very lucky to have her. And I’m glad you’re happy.”

I studied him some more. “We have the same hair,” I realised out loud. “You and me and my mother. And my hands are like yours.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what Daddy meant just then? About me and Luke?”

He nodded gently. “Your half-brother. Fanny’s son.”

That wasn’t what I’d wanted to know but I didn’t pursue it, feeling anxiety in my stomach.

“My best friend really. Like a soul-twin,” I added with a nervous laugh, not wanting to reveal too much. “I always wondered why I didn’t look like him that much, since we were both Casteels and Stonewalls combined. Turns out I’m not a Casteel at all. Did Momma take after Tony? Everyone at home said she looked like her mother.”

He gave a slight grimace. “She had his hands – like you and – like me. And the hair as you said, that came from my father’s side. But Tony was blond. She has a little of him around the cheekbones but no, she didn’t look much like him otherwise. Her determination, though, her intellect. She got that from him. Even the force with which she could love someone. She got his best features, I think.”

I looked at him uncertainly. “How did you find out who she really was? Had you always known?”

Bitterness briefly touched his lips. “No. I had no idea. I found out the same time she did, although I think Tony broke it to her with more care than Jillian did with me. She’d been lying about her age, wanting to protect her mother’s memory, thinking Leigh and Luke had needed a hasty wedding. But when Tony found out the truth, it all came out – Leigh had been pregnant before she fled here.” He sighed. “My brother was the centre of my world before Heaven came to us, and I always loved him, but he was also a very flawed man. What he did to Leigh was unconscionable.”

I reached to place a hand on his. “I’m sorry. It sounds like he wasn’t easy to love. Maybe Momma arranged things for the best. But I wish _we_ had met sooner.”

He smiled at me. “Yes. So do I.”

“Can you tell me about those pictures?” I asked, nodding my head to the far wall. “Do you know what they all are?”

He looked a little amused, perhaps realising that part of me wanted to avoid asking too many questions when I might not like the answers. But he was happy to oblige. “The paintings are Jillian’s. They’re the originals from which the murals were developed. She wouldn’t soil herself with too much undignified time up a ladder, you understand.” His mouth gave a sneering quirk. Then he smiled as he looked past them. “The family painted there is my grandparents, and my father when he was young.”

“The one who had depressions?”

“Yes, so Tony once said. He died when I was very young. There I am, in that photograph, with Leigh and Tony and Jillian.”

I stood to look with interest at that. I could clearly see the resemblance to my mother and myself. But I thought on reflection that I wasn’t quite the spitting image that the older townsfolk would have me believe. Not just my hair – my chin dimpled in a way my grandmother’s didn’t, my eyebrows followed a different line. I ruefully reflected that perhaps I had spent too long studying my own face while practicing portraiture.

“And I’m sure you can guess who is in the next photo.”

In the colour photo Tony had reached middle age while Jillian remained peculiarly timeless. They stood beside a Christmas tree and with them were my mother and a young man, with dark wavy hair flopping into his eyes. My mother looked so young, her eyes shining, and leaning, very slightly, to touch her shoulder against Troy’s arm. I looked back at him as he sat reclined on the armchair, with his hands behind his head, and felt a sudden stab of recognition. Now I knew why he had seemed so familiar that first moment at the graveside.

“You’re the man in the music box!”

He froze and said nothing, but I knew I was right. And suddenly his bitterness made perfect sense.

“You sat with her, with your toys all around you, and played Chopin, and talked, and you must have made the music box too, didn’t you?”

“Annie,” he said carefully, “this is something you should discuss with your mother.”

But I was persistent. “You were in love.”

He hesitated a moment more and then gave a sigh. “Believe it or not, I didn’t want anything to do with her when she first came. I was so locked away in myself, but your mother had a way of breaking into people’s hearts. We were both so lonely, both needed someone so badly. It was inevitable really. We became friends. And then we became … closer. We made plans. Plans we later discovered to be impossible.”

“And then what?” My heart seemed to have climbed into my throat as I slowly sat down, my eyes fixed on him.

“And then I left. A few years later I had a riding accident and … I allowed the world to think I’d died.”

“But Momma knew didn’t she? She said she found out when Jillian died. And … I heard you talking. She wrote you a letter.” Pieces started falling into place in my mind.

“You know what my parents are arguing about, don’t you?”

He held my gaze. “Yes.”

“Please tell me,” I said, and this time I knew I was deadly serious.

Troy opened his mouth.

And then the door burst open.

Daddy strode three paces into the room, downed the rest of the port he’d left and then in one startling motion he stepped forward and punched Troy right in the face. Troy’s chair fell backwards and I jumped to my feet. “Daddy?!”

He stopped and looked at me, and his face crumpled. “Annie,” he said, brokenly, and pulled me into his arms. It seemed as if he were holding back tears, his breath shaking. He kissed my forehead and then took hold of my arm. “Come on,” he said, “we’re leaving this freak house.”

Momma ran into the room behind him. Her eyes were wide and a small crack marred her beautiful lips. “Logan what are you doing?” Her gaze shifted to take in Troy who was picking himself up, his nose bloody and his cheek darkening. “What have you-“

“I’m going home, Heaven,” he shot at her. “You stay and do whatever it is you want to do. I’ll have nothing more to do with this place.” And he pulled me with him from the room and down the corridor to a small door, which opened into a wide garage.

Momma followed, trying to put herself between him and the key cabinet on the wall. “Logan you’re drunk. You can’t drive anywhere right now.”

But he pushed her roughly aside and grabbed a key almost at random, although he must have known which car it was for because a moment later he was leading me to an antique Jaguar. “Daddy, what’s going on?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ears. “What about Momma?”

“Your mother made her decisions long ago,” he ground out, closing the passenger door and climbing in himself.

“Logan, please!” Momma opened the rear door, leaning forward to see him. “I’ll call you a cab, you can take the limo, just don’t drive like this.”

“Get out of the car, Heaven,” he spat.

“Not until you give me the keys!”

But he ignored her, hitting a button in the dash board and screeching out of the garage doors as they rolled open. Frantically I pulled on my seatbelt and saw Momma doing the same.

“You have to control everything,” he said, his voice still fraught and bitter as we tore down the long driveway. “Every damn thing, Heaven. Anything I ever did wrong, anything anyone ever felt, you think you know best. And you say you hated Tony, but you are just like him, moving everyone round like we’re pieces on a chess board, and you think because you turn out to be right so often that means you don’t have to ask us. Like what we want, what we would want to know doesn’t matter. You know, Fanny may be a selfish bitch but at least she always stood up to your self righteous attitude.”

“Logan, you’re drunk and you’re angry, please stop the car and you can yell at me all you want.”

“Go to Hell,” he shot back, pulling straight out of the gates onto the highway without breaking even once.

“Daddy, you’re scaring me,” I gasped as the car accelerated more and more.

“Logan, for Gods sake, slow down!” I heard Momma say. And then it all seemed to happen in slow motion - a pheasant burst out in front of us and hit the dashboard. I felt the car swerve, and heard Momma scream. There was the klaxon sound of car horns around us and then trees filled my vision before the world went black.

….

It felt like I was struggling to emerge from a dark and lonely world. My eyes were heavy as I tried to open them. Faintly in the distance I could hear beeping, and quiet murmuring. And then a hand took mine and a voice I trusted spoke gently.

“Annie? Annie, it’s okay. Wake up Annie.”

I opened my eyes, and against the glaring bright lights of that hospital room, I saw my mother’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had been debating adding a scene between the Will and the start of the argument, but couldn’t quite make it work. Fair warning, I may come back and edit this later. 😊


	3. Heaven

_Troy?_ I’d known, before he even spoke a word, that it must be bad news. He’d kept true to his word all those years ago – never written, never called, never come to Virginia. Only the handful of toys that appeared, each out of the blue, with no note, showed he was thinking of me - of us.

“Heaven,” was all he said, his voice breaking with grief, and somehow, I knew what it meant.

“It’s Tony, isn’t it?”

…

I should have told him. I told myself over and over in that week of turmoil before we flew to Boston that the sooner I told him, the less he would be hurt. Hadn’t I always promised myself, I kept thinking, that I would tell the truth eventually? But, _no_ , another part of my mind would reply, I promised to tell _Annie_. And yet I couldn’t tell her either. There were so many dark secrets hiding at Farthingale Manor, how could I pluck just one to reveal without the whole façade unravelling? How could I, in my desperate need to assuage my guilt, have ever believed I could tell Annie the truth of who she was without tearing Logan’s heart apart? Or placing on my own child an impossible burden of silence? What would Tom have bid me do, I wondered? To have told the truth in the first place? Or to let sleeping dogs lie? But Tom had been dead twenty years now, and we had lived in a simpler world as children where life was harsh but the lies were easy. And so I said nothing. Until we stood before Tony’s grave, and my years of carefully woven secrets began to snag and unravel even more rapidly than I had feared. Such were my thoughts as I followed Logan upstairs, trying to keep my hands from shaking more with each step.

He paced our old bedroom like a wounded bear, his eyes never leaving me. “You slept with him, didn’t you? You found out he was alive and you jumped straight-“

“No,” I broke in, “it wasn’t like that.”

“Was it here? Was it in our bed?”

“Good God, of course not!”

“Did Tony know?”

“ _No_.”

“Are you going to tell me anything at all?” he demanded at last.

I wiped my damp, still shaking hands on the skirt of my sleeveless black dress, lowering myself with weak legs onto the vanity table which should have been thick with dust, but that had clearly been kept as clean as if we still lived here.

“I went to the cottage. Just to … see it again.”

“The cottage beyond the maze?”

“Yes.”

“The maze you used to stare at from our window.”

I frowned, searching my memory. Could it be true? I thought I had done my best to forget in those early weeks. “I don’t remember doing that.”

“All the damn time,” he said, bitterly. “I would walk into a room and you’d be gazing blankly outside, and then you’d notice me and blink and smile, and god damn it, I thought that was real.”

“Of course it was real,” I told him.

“If it was real then look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t end up in his bed.”

I couldn’t look at him at all. How could I ever make him understand? “We talked. There was – just so much to say. But later…” For a moment my voice trailed off. But then I straightened and looked him square in his scornful face. I was not ashamed of this. I would never feel shame at the love Troy and I had shared. “Later I went back. And yes, I spent that night there. We agreed it could never happen again, and I left him sleeping, and when I got back to the house, Jillian was dead. By the time I went to tell him, he’d already gone. I haven’t seen him since, and that’s the truth, Logan, I swear it.”

“How can you swear to anything when you have lied to me all these years. How can I believe you weren’t with him behind my back every time I was away.”

“You mean when you were busy sleeping with my sister,” I spat, losing the moral high ground in an instant. “Busy fathering a son you can barely look in the eye.”

His face flushed with anger. “And by God you made me pay for that, you hypocrite.”

“You didn’t even _like_ her, Logan. You slept with a woman you despised because you couldn’t wait a few days to come home to your wife. Don’t you dare compare that to-”

“To what? Your secret, long-lost love of your life? That’s what you think, isn’t it? This great, mystical love that makes everything and anything right,” he sneered. “Is that how you rationalised sleeping with your uncle?”

I flinched at that. “It’s not like we hadn’t done it before,” I bit back and then regretted it. That summer had been a precious memory, not a tool to wield in a fight.

“Yeah, I always thought as much. You made me wait for months until we were married, but not him. But I always knew deep down I couldn’t match up. Do you think I forgot all those things you said to me when you were sick? When you yelled at me over and over that you were going to marry someone who loved you more than I ever had?” It took the wind from my sails to be reminded of those cruel words, uttered in anger when I was ill with fever. I looked down as he continued. “Would you have married me if you’d known he was alive?”

I felt compelled to be honest. “No,” I said, quietly. “Because if I’d known he was alive I’d never have left here. You and I would never have found each other again. I would never have had chance to move past those things I said. I was trapped in a cage of missing him, and when I thought he was dead, I was set free. He set me free to build a real life. And we have that life, a wonderful life, Logan, despite everything we’ve been through.”

He ran a hand over his face and for the first time I could see the genuine pain in his heart, without the layers of anger and blame on top. “You still haven’t said it, Heaven. She - she’s not mine, is she?”

“Logan, of course she is! She’s been the apple of your eye nearly eighteen years, she loves you unconditionally. You’re the most wonderful father.”

“But I’m not, am I?” he pressed.

“I don’t know,” I said, still hedging around the truth. “The dates … weren’t clear.“

“But you can tell, can’t you? I know you, Heaven, and I know you can tell. That picture downstairs – that baby picture of _him_. You must have known the minute she was born.”

“Does it really matter?”

“It matters to me,” he ground out.

The silence held taut for a long moment as he looked at me. No longer angry. Just a man on the verge of having his heart broken. And finally I had to break it. “She’s too much like him to have got it through me,” I said quietly, holding back the tears that suddenly threatened. “Her talent, her mood swings, the way her hair curls. She looks like him when she sleeps. But it’s just biology, Logan. It’s nothing compared to all the years of love and care-“

He shook his head, as his body slumped in pain. “Don’t. Don’t talk as if this doesn’t mean anything.”

I stepped forward tentatively. “It doesn’t have to. Not if we don’t let it. Please trust me when I say that no matter what she knows or doesn’t know, she will always be your little girl and it will always be your love that means the most to her.”

“Trust you?” he lashed out, his temper firing up again. “When every father you’ve had has controlled you or abused you or fucked you? Is that what makes you think any of this is normal?”

I felt the crack of my hand as I slapped him, a moment before he slapped me back, knocking me into the bedpost and leaving me crumpled to the floor.

“Damn all you Tattertons and Casteels to Hell,” he spat and stalked out.

And that, for a very long time, was all I could remember.


End file.
